


lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall

by usoverlooked



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent & Lydia Martin Friendship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Past Allison Argent/Scott McCall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2514512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usoverlooked/pseuds/usoverlooked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia kisses him because it ruined them both the same way. Admittedly, this is not the best reason to start something, but hell, more has started for less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because Mori made me rewatch the scene where Allison dies and also because I'm really bad at quitting this stupid show.
> 
> This ignores season four, much like I ignored season four.

Lydia kisses him because it ruined them both the same way. Admittedly, this is not the best reason to start something, but hell, more has started for less.

 

It goes like this: Scott doesn’t want to date after Allison. Or maybe it’s Kira, who watched the love of his life die in his arms and decided to stop things.

(It’s undisputed – that Allison is, was, will be the love of Scott’s life. At one point it had been a sort of in-joke, between the four of them, Lydia, Stiles, Allison and Scott. Allison, always pragmatic, laughed it off, but Scott just grinned, because he knew as well as the rest, exactly what she was.)

So things move on. Stiles becomes this caricature of himself, always too quick with a quip, a joke, anything that is self-depreciating and just on the edge of too sharp to be funny. Derek moves away, probably to wherever Cora is, maybe not. It should be a bigger deal, maybe, but if anyone has earned their ticket out of this shithole of a town, it’s him. Isaac curls up on himself, like a photograph held over a flame. Maybe he blames himself. Lydia tries not to blame him.

(Some nights though, when she’s battling insomnia, she does blame him. Thinks that it should be him, that if you took in all the data of who’d be hurt, who’d mourn for the two of them and compared them side-by-side, it should’ve gone the other way. It makes her a bad person, surely, but that fact doesn’t stop her from thinking it.)

They keep going. Sure, there are monsters that come, but the pack is made of monsters, and they fight back. Lydia learns how to shoot a gun, how to use a sword, tricks and trades from Chris Argent. He stays, looking worn so thin. Lydia wonders if him and Derek traded off on who had to stay behind, who had to live in the town where their families ended. It’s good that Argent stayed, because he’s useful. By prom, all of the pack can protect themselves, can poison and jab and fight. There are six of them – Scott, Lydia, Stiles, Malia, Kira and Isaac. Danny tried and quit after getting slashed across the arm once.

 

It happens prom night, which, is cliché. Lydia loves that fact, in some sick way, it makes her happy that she kisses her best friend’s boyfriend on prom night. It’s not something planned. But it does feel, almost, like something that was a long time coming. Inevitable.

Before that though, it’s like this: neither of them ever say it, never say “I miss her” or “Anything, I’d do anything, fuck morality”, but it’s true. Everyone else mentions her, talks about what she’d do, what she’d like, but never the two of them. Stiles is the worst offender, always mentioning in passing her tics, her smirks, and Lydia hates him for it. She truly, truly hates him for it.

So it usually ends up, after all of them meet up, that she and Scott are left wherever. At first, they don’t talk much, or if they do it’s all strategy and plans. The pack – for them – is always at war. Scott still smiles, still is Scott, but it’s all muted. Like someone drew blood from him and left him a little paler. He falls asleep over texbooks sometimes and Lydia leaves him there, with a bookmark and a cup of coffee next to him. Other times, Lydia gets going too fast, starts going down some road of worst possibilities – her realm now – and he lets her go, then shakes his head. It’s always such a gentle dismissal, a little smile and a single point of his finger to some more accurate idea. If it was from anyone else, she’d hate it, but it’s Scott and somehow it seems acceptable.

Her parents all but disappear. Her dad’s business is moved to Switzerland and he goes with it. Officially, her mom stays, but unofficially, she doesn’t. Lydia likes it, the old house with the mountain ash on every window sill. She isn’t there often, just to sleep or if the pack needs somewhere to meet. Most afternoons she ends up at Scott’s.

It started that she would go to the library, but their selection of books – aside from crappy romantic novels – was lacking. So she headed to Deaton’s. Like clockwork, Scott would leave at 7:18, get to the door, turn and ask her if she wanted to have dinner with him and Isaac and his mom. At first she said no, but then she stopped bothering. Melissa – who always looked at Lydia with some combination of respect and concern – was there about half the time, Isaac even less. Scott would always fix something – stir-fry, macaroni and cheese, reheated tamales Melissa left for them – and he would always look apologetic if it was just the two of them. There was no explanation for where Isaac was, not that really mattered to Lydia. So she ate with him and at some point just talking about the supernatural and other things that were conspiring to kill them got boring. So they started an unofficial book club.

It worked, mostly, despite the fact that Lydia would read three books to Scott’s one. He was smart though, a fact that always slipped her mind because in the Stiles-and-Scott duo, he was the nice one and Stiles the smart one. She forced him to read classics, he pushed mystery novels on her and demanded that she write her guess as to the culprit down within the first fifty pages. She was only wrong about one in five times. He looks proud of himself when she gets it wrong, like he finally picked a book that was about as clever as she was. She liked that, it took away some of the sting of guessing wrong.

In the midst of all this, she has to stitch him together twice and he has to carry her out of one burning building. But that’s almost beside the point.

 

Prom night comes. Lydia goes with Danny, who promptly is whisked away by people who haven’t spent their high school years knee-deep in supernatural bullshit. He grins at her over his shoulder, but he walked her in and took pictures with her, so his duty as a date is done. Stiles and Malia go together, Isaac takes some sophomore girl and Kira has a cute boyfriend with a crew cut that buys her a corsage and everything. Scott goes stag.

The night is just beginning really. The DJ is still playing two fast songs for every slow. But Lydia wants to go, so she does. She’s halfway through the parking lot, one hand on a tazer and the other on her car keys when someone falls into step next to her. Scott greets her a second later, which luckily mean she doesn’t taze him. When she tells him how close she was to doing so, he just shrugs and smiles a little.

It’s charming in a lot of ways, but she doesn’t kiss him then. He walks her to her car, then asks for a ride. Lydia wonders if his mother gave him a ride and for a second she stills. Thinks of the freshman in her study hall who all have crushes on Scott, the junior who bravely asked him to homecoming. Thinks of Melissa, having to trade shifts at the hospital because Scott wanted to go alone.

So she gives him a ride. Kicks off her heels into the backseat and turns the radio off and they end up sitting on his front porch, side by side. Her dress overlaps onto his pant leg, their shoulders touch.

“Argent called me. He said Allison had told him, once, that she wanted to be strong and go to prom,” Scott says.

There was a spell, Lydia thinks. And that was it breaking.

So, she leans over and kisses him. And he kisses her back.

 

Graduation is going to be boring, the valedictorian herself decides. Lydia just steals her speech from the internet and changes some of the wording. When she shows Scott, the night before they graduate, he reads it and then takes a pen and corrects it. He scrawls something in the margin.

"’I felt as though I was partly unlearning what I had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live’,” Lydia reads aloud. She squints at him. “You think I should quote Camus to them?”

“That too,” he says and she wishes she didn’t know what he meant. He kisses the top of her head before turning to leave and if she were a better person, she thinks she’d let him go.

Instead, she grabs his wrist and pulls him back, then freezes. She’s got one hand on his wrist and the other still holding her speech. His hand comes up to her jaw, tracing it. So she goes up on tiptoe and kisses him. His hand tangles in her hair and the speech ends up fluttering to the ground. When he pulls back, he looks at her like it might strike him as a bad idea. She expects him to think that. Instead he ducks back down, kisses her again.

 

Stiles goes to Yale with probably a million dollars in student loans, Malia and Kira decide to go on a road trip and Isaac decides to try to find Derek. Lydia is supposed to go to Harvard or somewhere, that was always the plan. But she decides to take a year off and visit France.

“For Allison,” she tells Scott as she packs around him. He’s in her bed, which has become the norm since about July. He blinks at her, then nods. She looks up at him as she digs under her bed to find a left boot of a pair. “You can’t come. I don’t know why, but you just, you can’t.”

“Okay,” he answers, ever understanding. His brow furrows for a moment. “You have to go to college though.”

She freezes then, stuck between feeling upset at the very idea, but also at being caught. She nods, slowly, and he touches her hair. She looks up at him, meets his eyes, and nods again. She leans up and kisses him. He kisses her slow and soft and almost sad. Like always.

 

When she comes back a year later, it’s November and the town feels deserted. Her mother sold the house, finally gave up the pretense. When she tells Scott this, still jetlagged and with her bags tucked in the rental car, Scott looks up from the poodle he’s stitching up. Offers to let her stay with him, in her apartment.

They share a bed, her on the left with the covers, him on the right with an extra pillow. It works too well and he should probably bother her about colleges more, but he doesn’t. The months roll by and Lydia finds work as a research assistant at the community college, where they just assume she’s a student. Melissa comes by for dinners and she always smiles, hugs Lydia tightly.

“I don’t think she liked Allison that much,” Scott says, one night in their bed. The moon’s gone, so it’s dark enough for him to say such things. Lydia rolls over to look at him and he’s got one arm tossed over his face. “I mean, I don’t know why she would, I was always sad or whining or sneaking out. Allison didn’t come by that much either.”

“She liked Allison. Everyone liked Allison,” Lydia says, because it’s true. Everyone did, even Derek there at the end. Scott’s jaw twitches at that. Lydia rolls over and tries not to remember finding out about werewolves and all the rest, finding out all those lies, and disliking Allison. Lydia tries very hard to undo those two weeks of anger. She’d love those two weeks back.

 

It lasts two years and a few stray months, before it all goes wrong. In that amount of time, several things happen. Scott attempts to adopt three stray kittens – Lydia manages to give them away to kids in their apartment complex before getting too attached. Lydia gets her associate’s degree, shoves it in a drawer next to the camera her mother got her for France that she never uses. Malia comes back and finds work as a welder, reports that Kira is studying marine biology in Florida. Stiles visits exactly three times and acknowledges the fact that Scott and Lydia are living together exactly zero times. Danny, of all people, gets married and Lydia grins at the invitation for at least ten minutes before sticking it on their fridge. Isaac and Cora start dating, then break up, then get back together, rinse, repeat. Derek comes back to Beacon Hills, then leaves, then returns, rinse repeat. And also, Allison comes back.

 

Allison coming back is when it all goes wrong, actually.

 

There are witches who are apparently trying to do the right thing. Scott saved one of the coven, so they decide to return the favor and save the last of his pack. Or something like that, but regardless it means that Allison bursts into being again. Lydia rounds the corner, nearly slams into Scott, who is frozen at the sight. Allison’s their age still, a white dress practically hanging off her body. She’s entirely too thin and shaking, teeth chattering. The witches look pleased.

Lydia screams, like she hasn’t in years.

She screams and screams and waits to wake up like she always does in the nightmares.

Instead Allison smiles at her, a shaky thing of a grin.

“It’s okay,” she says. The words are all-inclusive, Lydia knows. Because Scott’s got one hand on Lydia’s arm and, of course, _of course_ , Allison would know. Allison smiles then, real and true. “I can’t be here.”

“Are- I’m- y-you,” Scott stammers out. Lydia can practically see it, a thousand thoughts fighting to rise to her.

“I love you,” Lydia says, feeling intrusive and wrong and desperate. Allison looks at her, eyes teary.

“I love you, Lydia,” she says, that strong voice of hers. Everything about her is strong, Lydia thinks. Allison looks to Scott. “I love you too, Scott.”

“I love you,” he says, voice thick. “I’m so sor-“

“No, no. It was too soon, but it was…” Allison trails off, her eyes focusing somewhere else. Lydia worries that she might be gone again. But, Allison nods. “It was the right way. For my friends.”

Allison shuts her eyes, little crinkles at their corners, like she’s struggling to focus.

“Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger,” she says, smiling. Her eyes are watery now, but Lydia nods and next to her, Scott does the same. Allison repeats it, once, then falls.

Scott runs to her, Lydia runs to the nearest witch. Apparently the spell isn’t as powerful as they thought, just powerful enough for that. For good-bye, for a good stirring up of everything. Lydia punches the witch, breaks the woman’s nose with a satisfying crunch. Scott doesn’t pull her away like he should. He cradles Allison’s body ( _again_ ) and curls around her instead.

 

Lydia applies for the spring semester at Princeton that night, huddled over the light of the computer screen in the kitchen, feeling a little like a traitor.

 

“You’re just going to leave,” Scott asks, voice flat. Lydia refolds a sweater, places it in the winter clothes box. When she doesn’t answer, Scott walks over to her, grabs her hand. “Lydia.”

“I have to,” she says, because somehow she does. Because she saw it, what she’s been trying not to see for three years almost.

Scott’s jaw twitches, the way it always does when he’s trying to figure out what to say and she leans up, kisses his cheek.

“It’ll be fine,” she says.

 

(What she doesn’t say, what she wants so badly to say, is for him to come with her. There’s always vet clinics, there’s always people who need saving. Beacon Hills doesn’t need him, not anymore, there’s nothing left here but loss and hurt and bad things. She doesn’t say let me save you, because she can’t do it – can’t say it and can’t save him, both.)

 

Time goes fast, faster than she’d like it to. She graduates in just a year, with the help of no social life and her associate’s degree, goes straight on to grad school, and doesn’t even bother to look up. There are boys who want her and sometimes she lets them, but never for long. Stiles calls her when he’s in town, they have awkward dinners, dance around everything and talk about academia instead. Kira has a blog, all about the animals she’s caring for, that Lydia follows. Derek ends up in New York and when she goes up, for conferences and meetings, he lets her stay on his couch. There’s something about that she likes, that he doesn’t offer to take the couch. On one trip, Derek tells her that Isaac and Cora – not together, Isaac is now dating a different werewolf – have returned to Beacon Hills, with Scott. Lydia tries not to perk up at that, and if she does Derek doesn’t acknowledge it.

When she’s in her final year of grad school, there’s a flurry of murders that are definitely supernatural in nature on campus. Scott shows up on her doorstep after the third, and, really, Lydia should be less surprised.

“I can’t lose you too,” he says, brushing past her into her apartment. She blinks at the hallway, processing, and his hand ghosts along her arm. “Is – if you really don’t want me here, I can-“

“No, you can stay,” Lydia answers. She does not kiss him, though she wants to.

That night, she does sleep next to him though.

 

“When she came back, I think she was happy that we were happy,” Scott says, two nights later, in the dark. She still has not kissed him. She still is sleeping next to him. She turns to look at him.

“She’s the love of your life,” Lydia says, that same lilt to it like when it was a joke between the four of them.

There was a spell, and she broke it. He leans over and kisses her.

“She was one of them,” he says.

 

(Scott kisses her because they both healed the same way. Admittedly, it took a long time, but, hell, it’s taken a lot longer for a lot less.)

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ masonjo  
> come talk to me!


End file.
